Gertrude Howe
An older white woman with white hair in an updo, wearing an all-black top with a high collar
Gertrude Howe, from her 1916 passport application
BornSeptember 13, 1846
Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S.
DiedDecember 29, 1928 (aged 82)
Nanchang, China
OccupationMethodist missionary educator in China
RelativesIda Kahn (adopted daughter)

Gertrude Howe (September 13, 1846 – December 29, 1928) was an American Methodist missionary educator and translator, based in China from 1872 until her death there in 1928.

Early life and education

Howe was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, the daughter of Isaac Howe and Elizabeth Howe. Her family were Quakers and active in abolition work.[1] She attended the Michigan Agricultural College in 1870 and 1871, and the University of Michigan in 1871.[2] She graduated from Michigan State Normal School in 1872.[3]

Career

Three women standing side by side; Ida Kahn is a middle-aged Chinese woman wearing a silk tunic; Gertrude Howe is an older white woman wearing a silk jacket; Li Bi Cu is a middle-aged Chinese woman wearing a light-colored jacket
Ida Kahn, Gertrude Howe, and Li Bi Cu at a missionary society meeting in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1919

In her teens, Howe taught school in Lansing, Michigan, and was appointed principal of a primary school when she was 20 years old. In 1872, Howe went to Kiukiang (Jiujiang) in China,[4] as a missionary under the auspices of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.[5] She and medical missionary Lucy H. Hoag founded a girls' high school in 1873, requiring students to have unbound feet to enroll.[6] She adopted and raised four Chinese daughters,[4][7] including Kang Cheng, known as Ida Kahn.[8][9] She taught her daughters English, and mentored several other Chinese students who continued their educations in the United States,[10][11] including Mary Stone,[12] Phebe Stone, and Ilien Tang.[13][14][15] She also assisted later women missionaries in China, including Welthy Honsinger Fisher.[16] "While she spared no pains in laying broad educational foundations," according to a biographical pamphlet for church use, "she never lost sight of character-making, to which she gave the prominent place."[4]

Howe moved to Chungking in 1883, and opened another girls' school; but her new school was destroyed within a few years, and she returned to Kiukiang. She translated a Methodist hymnal, and a history of the Reformation, for her students to use.[13] She spoke about her work in the United States during her visits, including in Detroit in 1893,[17] in Pittsburgh in 1909,[18] in Brookline in 1919,[19] and in Lansing in 1920.[20]

Howe's sister, Delia, joined her work in China from 1879 to 1882.[21] Delia Howe became a physician in Detroit.[22]

Personal life

Howe lived in Nanchang with Ida Kahn in her later years. She died there in 1928, after years of declining heatlh, at the age of 82.[23][24] Kahn wrote an English-language obituary of Howe, listing out her daughters Ida, Julia, Fannie, and Belle,[4] and grandchildren, and detailing the specifics of her funeral.[7]

References

  1. ↑ Pomfret, John (2016-11-29). The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present. Macmillan. p. 102. ISBN 978-0-8050-9250-9.
  2. ↑ "University of Michigan Graduates in China". Detroit Free Press. 1900-07-08. p. 28. Retrieved 2023-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ↑ Badgley-Malone, Megan. "The First Ten Women at M.A.C.: Gertrude Howe (1846-1928)" Archives@MSU (November 9, 2020).
  4. 1 2 3 4 Baker, Frances J. Gertrude Howe: Thirty-one years a missionary in China. Columbia University Libraries; a pamphlet biography. Boston: Woman's Foreign Missionary Society – via Internet Archive.
  5. ↑ Wheeler, Mary Sparkes (1881). First Decade of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church: With Sketches of Its Missionaries. Phillips & Hunt. pp. 128–131.
  6. ↑ Baker, Franc (1887). Historical Sketches of the Northwestern Branch of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Jameson & Morse, printers. pp. 75–76.
  7. 1 2 Karl, Rebecca E.; Zarrow, Peter (2020-03-23). Rethinking the 1898 Reform Period: Political and Cultural Change in Late Qing China. Brill. pp. 192, 204–207. ISBN 978-1-68417-374-7.
  8. ↑ Shemo, Connie A. (2010-03-19), So Thoroughly American Gertrude Howe, Kang Cheng, and Cultural Imperialism in the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, 1872–1931, Duke University Press, pp. 117–140, doi:10.1515/9780822392590-007, ISBN 978-0-8223-9259-0, retrieved 2023-11-03
  9. ↑ Robert, Dana Lee (1996). American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought and Practice. Mercer University Press. pp. 185–186. ISBN 978-0-86554-549-6.
  10. ↑ "Cosmopolitan Cullings". Pittsburg Dispatch. 1892-09-29. p. 4. Retrieved 2023-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ↑ Chin, Carol C. (2003). "Beneficent Imperialists: American Women Missionaries in China at the Turn of the Twentieth Century". Diplomatic History. 27 (3): 327–352. ISSN 0145-2096. JSTOR 24914416.
  12. ↑ Ma, Li (2021-01-28). Christian Women and Modern China: Recovering a Women's History of Chinese Protestantism. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 3, 7–8. ISBN 978-1-7936-3157-2.
  13. 1 2 Robert, Dana L. (1998). "Gertrude Howe (1847-1928)". The United Methodist Church. Retrieved 2023-11-03.
  14. ↑ Ye, Weili (1994). ""Nü Liuxuesheng": The Story of American-Educated Chinese Women, 1880s-1920s". Modern China. 20 (3): 315–346. ISSN 0097-7004. JSTOR 189202.
  15. ↑ Gamewell, Mary Ninde (October 14, 1911). "Two of China's 'Little Women'". The Junior Herald. 22: 1306–1307.
  16. ↑ Fisher, Welthy Honsinger (1962). To Light a Candle. Drew University and the General Commission of Archives and History for the United Methodist Church. McGraw Hill.
  17. ↑ "Foreign Mission Work". Grand Rapids Herald. 1893-10-13. p. 1. Retrieved 2023-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. ↑ "Religious and Charitable". The Pittsburgh Press. 1909-03-27. p. 9. Retrieved 2023-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. ↑ "Oriental Methodists at Hallowed Spot". The Anaconda Standard. 1919-11-13. p. 12. Retrieved 2023-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  20. ↑ "Church Calendar". Lansing State Journal. 1920-02-17. p. 10. Retrieved 2023-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  21. ↑ "Dr. Howe, Former Lansingite, Dies". Lansing State Journal. 1922-04-22. p. 2. Retrieved 2023-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  22. ↑ "Detroit Missionary at Kiu Kiang; Gertrude Howe, sister of Dr. Howe, of this City". Detroit Free Press. 1900-07-20. p. 4. Retrieved 2023-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  23. ↑ Ward, David; Chen, Eugene (2017). "The University of Michigan in China". Maize Books. doi:10.3998/mpub.9885197. ISBN 9781607854272.
  24. ↑ "Untitled news item". Detroit Free Press. 1929-02-03. p. 16. Retrieved 2023-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
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